Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Jay Skinner

Damon Pistulka  00:11

Nicolle

Nicole Donnelly  00:14

we go having a jam session here real fast we are great day today all the way to start on Monday right oh you don’t need to talk.

Damon Pistulka  00:37

No. Are just rolling today Nice Nice. Nice. Oh man the call. This is awesome because Monday motivation manufacturing ecommerce success is kicking off. We never kicked off like this before. This is so good. Yeah, we’re gonna be getting them. We’re gonna be talking about getting the most out of your digital marketing today. Nicole, take it away. Take it away. Yeah.

Nicole Donnelly  01:09

And what a way to start the show Jay Skinner? I have to say that was amazing. As a fellow musician, not nearly as great as a musician as you are. I can tell you that right now. But as someone who plays the piano and loves to play the organ, that was amazing. Thank you for that wonderful intro. And, you know, keeping it fun and jazzy for us. It’s so cool. I can tell already. You’re a renaissance man.

Jay Skinner  01:34

I guess I am. I was telling one of my friends Jeffrey Gitomer, the king of sales, said, Jay, you need to write a book. Dough Ray me how I played my way to the top. I have used my piano playing and my showmanship since I was a little boy. And then when it comes to trade shows and doing business and everything, find a crab find a piano and we make friends. Oh,

02:02

I love it. Very cool. Awesome.

Damon Pistulka  02:04

You know, there’s a there’s a few there’s very few things that are as special as finding someone that can play the piano well, and just hanging out listening to music and talking around a piano.

Jay Skinner  02:16

Yeah. Yeah. And when it comes to like showing up at a party or a guy I love like in business, doing a trade show. And you get down in the lobby of the hotel for the convention or something. And I’m always finding that piano and I just sit down and start ripping off a couple of tunes. Have some fun. Before you know it. You got a crowd and I got my government badge on dinner. Oh, whatever it is. I’m selling for, you know, 30 years I was selling plastic pallets. I was pallets pa WL ets.com. That’s a pretty good URL. Oh, boy. That’s a great.com for 30 years. Yep.

Nicole Donnelly  02:58

And you must have got that one real early because I bet we got

Jay Skinner  03:01

that back when Al Gore invented the internet.

Nicole Donnelly  03:09

Yeah, well, we’ve got a couple of folks chiming in here. Hi,

Damon Pistulka  03:17

Gary.

Nicole Donnelly  03:19

Gary, he’s my spirit animal hurdle over there, Gary. Just show

Damon Pistulka  03:24

All right everyone. Yeah.

03:26

Awesome. Yeah, awesome.

Damon Pistulka  03:29

gonna be awesome. So go ahead and Nicole take this thing and get rolling.

Nicole Donnelly  03:34

Well that we you know, we have to honor Curt we miss Curt. We wish he could be here with us. He always brings such incredible energy. So we’re missing your bird we issue? Yes, yes. Wherever you are. Just know we’re sending you lots of love. And honor

Jay Skinner  03:50

want to do a show with you sometime when you’re live. You’re out doing something special. And I’m so happy I got Nicole and Damon, who

Nicole Donnelly  04:00

just means you’re gonna have to come back on the show and so that you guys

Jay Skinner  04:03

can have a fun jam again. Well, you know, I met Curt through the manufacturing engineering partnership, Purdue University in Indiana. I was recommended to you know, I one of my clients, packaging systems is very involved there. I’ve been working with the MEP to help improve their situation. And man, part of it was all of a sudden I get these emails saying he got to know Curt Anderson, and boy do I love him. I love his show. Love brings on love the work that he does. So Curt Anderson, you’re the man. All right.

Nicole Donnelly  04:37

Yeah. And what a great shout out for sure

04:40

it was this is well in honor of

Nicole Donnelly  04:43

Curt, Jay Got to ask the question that he always asks every guest comes on the show. It’s it’s always a winner question. So the question is when you were a little boy growing up, where did you grow up? Jay, first of all, what was your where where do you grow? Best question

Jay Skinner  04:59

to ever Carthage Indiana is where I started as a little country town. Until then in fifth grade. I moved to the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Nicole Donnelly  05:10

Nice. So when you were growing up in Carthage, Indiana, yes. Who was your hero?

Jay Skinner  05:18

My dad. Oh, here’s why did you do this to me? Is he he was he was 50 years old when I was born. My mom was 45. Wow. And I have a little kid out there by the school playing shooting baskets, probably ripe old age of six. And some said, Hey, where’s your old man? You know, it’s like, Don’t call my dad. Oh, man. Yeah, but the thing was by having older parents, I got raised in a reared in a way that the gave me the opportunity to go out there. And I didn’t know a stranger. I thought every kid talks to adults all the time. I went to every party, every meeting everything. And they put me in a position to be successful that way. There never was a thing that said, Oh, Jay, you’re too little too young, too stupid to anything to not do that. It was you can do whatever you want to honey, come along, get in the car. We’re going to do this or do that. And William Herschel Skinner, and my mom, Mary Elizabeth Skinner gotta love her. She was always cheering me on right there.

Nicole Donnelly  06:26

So you had your mom for your cheerleader, and you had your dad who was like you can do anything you can be in any room you want to.

Jay Skinner  06:31

And mom was that way. And dad was the example. He was the quiet strength. He was a big guy in the community. He was a big guy in politics. He helped get governors and senators done. He was the state personnel director for Indiana he was that did huge things. And one of the biggest things he did was his township trustee. And he was out there, like, feeding the hungry and to help and take care of poor people and stuff. And it was like, I learned about taking care of people and loving people from my parents.

Nicole Donnelly  07:07

Amazing. Well, I can feel that energy from you here today that you’re just really passionate about that. That’s so cool. We got a few more guests chiming in. We got to say hi to Michael boza Hernandez.

Jay Skinner  07:19

I go. Glad you’re here.

Nicole Donnelly  07:23

Thanks for joining us. And we also have Nancy O’Leary. We love Nancy. Hi, Nancy. How are you looking forward to great conversation. So oh, there’s no doubt this is going to be fun, Jay?

Jay Skinner  07:34

Yeah, I’m just so thankful that him in those of you that use stream yard, they have a new feature now. So in addition to using your link, I was able to, to link in my LinkedIn channel on my YouTube channel. And so it’s like very cool. People that know me and I like there’s Joseph. Hello, Joseph. Joseph, are you coming all the way from Africa? I think you are. My my group needs to learn Michael Barbosa. I have an international audience. I love my people. And it’s fun with them to jump on and want to know what’s Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  08:05

yeah, it is. And it is a nice feature to that’s it’s going out to our or with our Facebook and our company. LinkedIn is right now as well. It’s nice to be able to that so on Jeff’s was coming from Germany. Awesome.

Nicole Donnelly  08:21

national presence. I Joseph from Germany, what part of Germany you tune in for? Let us know,

Jay Skinner  08:28

let us know. Joseph. Yes. Put your last name on there. Joseph helped me know because I think I know who you are. Anyway, I’ve done business on every continent, except for Antarctica. And if you got any customers, for me, let’s go.

Nicole Donnelly  08:47

Every call you have to ask you’ve done business in every continent.

Jay Skinner  08:53

Joe Steinberger. Okay, man, he’s electric. This is the guy if you got static, he knows how to get rid of it. This is he’s a he’s a huge guy in the world of eliminating static in the when you have big machines that move, like fill machines and stuff like that. Yeah, well, and they create static electricity. He’s one of the pioneers in how to eliminate that and make great things happen. And, and he’s, he’s like, all over the world. He’s got houses in, like multiple continents, and in a very successful smart guy. Good to have you, Joseph. Lose the ball. Good. Good to see you.

Nicole Donnelly  09:26

Yes, very cool. So you’ve worked on every continent. So I gotta ask, I got to ask, What’s it like? What are the differences in doing business in America versus doing business in Africa or Europe, or Asia or Australia? Tell us

Jay Skinner  09:40

well, it’s like I got books and things around me. But one of the things that I do before I go to a foreign country is I will pull out my it’s like kiss bow or shake hands, and there’s actually a book and I will look up the country that I’m going to and understand what some of the customs are, and understand some very important things. And Joe says Antarctic is the only one I missed to I know it will eventually get there. Maybe we’ll do a deal with air together. That’d be fun. Anyway. So like, for instance, here in the United States, we’re rebels. That’s where we came at. Okay. And so when you get to other countries, let me take, let me take France, for instance. You’ve heard about the ugly American. Well, I get it cuz Americans go over there. And there’s two things happening there. And the French guys don’t like the Americans and American guys don’t like the French people. And the funny thing is, is because here’s, here’s why at least I think I figured it out. The Americans don’t even want to learn how to say, you know, hello, or goodbye. Or ask anything in a foreign language, they want to learn anything. And the French people when they try to speak English, because of their accent and how they work it, they sound angry to our ears. And so we like take an exception think they’re mad. They’re not mad. They’re just trying to say the English words. And so there’s this weird combination thing that that goes on. When I go to Asia, it’s like across the board, a lot higher level respect when you’re doing business, and you need to be more respectful. And then if you’re bowing, for instance, is like, you’ll learn this At the Dojo if you haven’t already learned now, when you bow, eyes down, don’t do this. That means you don’t trust him. And just bow with your eyes down. Domo Arigato, because I’m us, you know, no, some words. And people love you. And when it’s all said and done, I haven’t met a country or a people or society that I don’t love or can’t love. And we all get along. It’s great.

Nicole Donnelly  11:58

Love it. Amazing. You have varied experience in history. I mean, you you have the CEO extender, which I’m excited to learn more about, how did you end up starting that company and it looks like you’ve got so much experience with this pallet company. So just walk us down and tell us a little bit your journey, your career, how you started out and kind of how you ended up to where you are now?

Jay Skinner  12:21

Well, we always talk about I’ll say this, as little boy. I played Jesus loves me on the kazoo in church at the age of about. I mean, I was going to the Methodist Church, and I kept seeing the special music and the boys on the trumpets and stuff from high school acid. And so I don’t even really know how I organized it. But I organized this I can do that. And I stood up there and I played Jesus loves me on kazoo, that was my first really big performance. But then as time went on, I found out that I could weep potholders and sell them door to door in that little town of Carthage. And I did it. I was safe. And you could do that stuff. Well, as I got older, my mom wanted me be a doctor and stuff I got into music. I wanted to do that I did. Thanks. But I did find this out as I got older, if you want to make some money, sales is probably a really good place to go. It’s where you go and everything else fails to work out. No. One to be good for you. But I’ll tell you what I know a lot of sales guys is that the last thing they ever thought they’d end up doing? Yeah. But when they got into it, and applied themselves, and then they said I don’t want to be in the bottom 80% won’t be the top 20 or 10% of them. Start reading books. Zig Ziglar, Jeffrey Gitomer, Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley. And get to know these guys, too, like, it’s like when I read a book, I call the author and get to know him. I don’t know of anybody heard about doing that. But most of these guys are highly accessible. And so over the years, that’s great advice. I’ve been calling authors and getting to know him. So I know a lot of these guys is very cool. And so I wanted to be in the top. And then when you read about this stuff, where you go to the self education, continuous education getting smarter and smarter, and most sales guys have only like, did one seminar and read one book, like 20 years ago. They work off of zig said, this is like oh my gosh, well, time has moved on guy. You gotta keep getting smarter. I hope my surgeon did when he gave me an operation a week ago. I wanted to keep up on the latest and greatest as a salesman, it’s a profession as well. So I go into sales, I get good at that decide to be on the top of it. And I go job to job to job to job job. And then all of a sudden I wake up in 1993 and I get called to be part of a startup called Stratus plastic pallets. We didn’t call it that then was just Stratos Corp, and it was doing some packaging kindness toughen, I had a couple of years of experience with plastic pallets and plastics and packaging that I’d rolled into. Yeah, fortunately, no noncompetes or anything like that. And I joined this company, we started up, they moved the headquarters to Indianapolis, they had one year under their belt, just kind of getting some things together, but I help them find the market, the types of molding the types of things that we might do. And we launched the company that became pallets.com. And in 22,007, we sold to private equity, then again in 2012. And then 2018, is like, I stayed with it, I wasn’t one of the owners, but stayed with it. And then bad October 2018, and took a job in another area entirely. And just to kind of do something else. It was beautiful. wasn’t as fun as it used to be. I helped build a multimedia National Company, but you hear about private equity. You know, when they get to the point where they’re running the show by EBIT, da the the what I call the Battlecry of the private equity guy, the PE, guys, the virtue, the venture capitalists, EBIT, da, well, it’s like, I didn’t even know that word until we got bought the first time. All I knew is just keep making money Man Powered Up over there and let them count it. Anyway, so I built this along with the owner of the company. And then 18 I got out did something else were for a couple other guys did some other staff did some other stuff. And all of a sudden, I realized I wanted to do on my own. What I’ve been asking other people to pay me to do for them. And and there I was when I started working for business owners, because that’s why I’ve always done started doing jobs and getting projects done for business owners at the highest level. Call, there’s nothing I can’t do. Seriously, you’re in a business. I can’t imagine that you could throw some out, say, if it’s manufacturing efficiencies, if it’s going back to manufacturing, it was all developing a marketing program. It was doing a sales program was helping teach people how to sell. It was help doing product development. I got like eight patents. I’m a right and left brain thinker,

17:14

my gosh. Renaissance man work for them.

Nicole Donnelly  17:19

Oh my gosh, like, I have a couple follow up questions. In the back not too long. You called you called? You said you called authors of the books that you read. I got to know who was the most interesting person that you talk to? What did they say that was most surprising when you call them?

Jay Skinner  17:34

Okay. Well, let me go back to the first one because this will be bad. 1980 Dr. Tony Alessandra, he wrote me on manipulative selling. And he’s one of the fathers of the disk system. And well known if you go in here, you’ll see his stuff. And he’s gotten out 2326 different books now. And he’s become a real good friend of mine. And now he’s has a company called assessments 24x Seven, and he’s one of the fathers of online assessments worldwide. So he’s one of the top ones. And what was interesting with him is sure, Jay, I’ll be your friend. And his book changed my sales life. I went from reading this, and learning and understanding about developing rapport. And what makes people tick. You know, from where I was before, I wasn’t too bad. But man, it probably doubled or tripled my sales at the time in the business that I was in. And then he was also so kind as I grew in my my life. He would like I would call him on the phone say Tony, I got a sales meeting here. And I got a bunch of salespeople and I’m teaching them your book. Would you come on the speakerphone and motivate them? They’ve gone through it. They understand the principles and wouldn’t be cool if you just showed up. And you know, that guy would just do that. He wouldn’t charge me he would just come on talk. Oh, he was good friends with Brian Tracy. And then he and Jim Cathcart worked with Earl Nightingale to do stuff. And so that was cool. But people that I contacted was Jeffrey Gitomer, Little Red Book of Selling the king of sales. Jeffries has about 1617 bestsellers in there in the millions in terms of I know that he sold and I recommend this is a great book and you go there anything Jeffrey Gitomer, so I read the book, he shows up online live during the what he called the pandemic. He was doing lives. I was like, holy cow. Well, I get on there. I chatted in a couple of times. Next thing you know, he gives me a call to become besties posts over the years. Jeffrey and I are doing stuff together. And that’s lots of fun.

Damon Pistulka  19:47

Cool,

Jay Skinner  19:49

and then fill in the blanks in between Jim Cathcart somebody that I’ve gotten to know very well here recently, when you’re the speaker and a bunch of other books, National Speakers Association To kind of big deal when Brian Tracy came to town, you know, it’s like, Hey, Jay, you know, we got to spend time together back in his dressing room before we went on. Oh, did I mention in 1978 79? I met at the positive thinking rally here in Indianapolis. I met Zig Ziglar. And Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. At that point, writer, photographer, and circulation manager for small newspaper which gave me credentials. Yeah. Yeah. 10 years later, I was the the limousine driver for Grateful Dead.

20:41

No way.

Jay Skinner  20:42

No. And I got to and I was a limousine driver when? Who was it? That Elton John came to Purdue to do a concert. I took him from the airport over to the thing. He said, Well, as long as you’re a piano player, come on in. And I got to sit down on his piano and evaluate the acoustics in the auditorium standing there on stage with Elton John, how fun was that?

Damon Pistulka  21:02

Oh, wow. Incredible. Okay. Hey, people

Jay Skinner  21:05

came on. I mean, they want to know about the topic. Yeah, yeah. To get the most.

Damon Pistulka  21:13

to that. I mean, your life? It’s interesting. I mean, this could be Yeah, yeah, we could spend a lot of time on this, but it is we did. We did come here to talk about getting the most out of digital marketing and, and out of your digital marketing agency, I look at the title there. But So Jay, when you’re coming in, you know, these these companies are spending a lot of money. A lot of them are have a digital marketing agency, and they’re just kind of on retainer, and what are some of the things that that you’re seeing when you come in?

Nicole Donnelly  21:45

Yeah, tell me. I gotta hear it.

Jay Skinner  21:49

So I’m gonna answer Joe’s question. He says, What’s the name of the book again, non manipulative selling techniques, or non manipulative selling? The I haven’t heard him. He’s a good guy, too. He’s the founder of BNI. Talking about networking. Yep. But now minnifield was telling Tony, Alessandra, that was the book. Okay. Sorry. I just when people come on, they start asking questions is like, yeah, come on. I gotta answer.

Damon Pistulka  22:19

Yeah, the one was, the other one. You mentioned too, is a Little Red Book of sales.

Jay Skinner  22:23

Yes. Yeah, the Little Red Book of sales by Jeffrey Gitomer. And, and I typed in my the th e. J, why skinner.com, which is my website, you go there, you can click on the internet web, I do a show every week. And you can contact me there, get to know me there. And you can see all my shows and go to my podcasts list and everything. And see all the people I know. And I’ve talked to I do a combination of interviews with people like this. And I riff on topics on my own as well. Okay. Sorry, what was the question?

Nicole Donnelly  22:57

How do you get the most out, like what are, you know,

Damon Pistulka  23:00

out of a digital marketing agency, you know, because you come into these companies, right? And they’re there, they got this retainer, it’s all going on, ready? And they go, it doesn’t feel it doesn’t feel right.

Jay Skinner  23:12

Exactly. And here’s the scenario at me as the CEO, extender, business owner hires me, and he brings me on to do some projects that he knows needs to get done. And it’s oftentimes it’s like, what are you doing for your social media presence, your web and all this kind of stuff. He says, Oh, we’re paying, it could be anywhere from four to 7000 $8,000 a month to, you know, xyz.com, a digital marketing company. And their job is to do posting and do our website and all this stuff, and pay per click, and all this kind of stuff. And we have a monthly meeting. And they tell us all this stuff. I said great. How’s it going? And then go pretty good. I guess. I know we need it. I suppose it’s working. But frankly, Jay, and this is the relationship I have is I don’t really know what they’re talking about. And I’m not sure how to assess the, the value of what they’re doing, how it’s working. And I go, I got it. Well, don’t let the white hair fool you. I’ve been doing computers since they were invented. And it’s like I’m either their best friend or their worst enemy. But let me start sitting in on those monthly meetings and get to know Him and be the representative at your business as your business as you to them. You know, help them understand that not there’s a new sheriff in town I’m not trying to get rid of I’m what it is, is I want to keep them going but they generally had a lot of energy when they started the first three or six months. Came in, took pictures, videos, you know, the whole shootin match, got everything all set up and it was wonderful. And then it starts to wane and then you have these months The account executive meetings and they say, well, you’re up 3% 10% 20% of this, and we did your pay per click, and we allocate in this mess to this. And there’s much to that and everything. And they talk in terms of percentages and stuff like this, and then the number of calls in the number of conversions. And it’s like, most of my business owner, customers are kind of glazing over. And they just trust and they don’t have a big marketing department, not one at all, really. And the camera hired this digital marketing company to be that for them. What they don’t understand is that the digital marketing company has other customers. And unless they have someone inside the company, to feed them information, to be there to be available on the phone, kind of like at a moment’s notice. And to build a collaboration. After a while, when they realize the only guy I can talk to the CEO, and he hasn’t got time for me. And then the other guys are too busy sellin, then all of a sudden, the digital marketing agency slumps into kind of a rhythm that’s less than what could be wonderful. Well, what do I do? I work for the company, I am the representative, what do you need? What are we talking about? How are we going to build this thing up? What are we going to do? Okay, great. I’ve got some ideas. Oh, is like, and I work with them? And I’m on the monthly calls. But I’m also on everyday calls, whatever it takes. We’ve got the website and get the social media, what’s the posting frequency? What are you doing? Click? How gone? I mean, no, don’t just tell me percentages and don’t compare to like a really bad week. Yeah, talk about what we’re doing. And how this works. What are your recommendations for this? How are we doing this? And that this doesn’t that? Oh, my gosh. And they’re saying, I can just see when they hang up from the call. This guy has done this before? Yeah. Engine Optimization, not only back in the old days, when we used to hide white type and white backgrounds. Yeah. You know, I understand that today, too. And I can be fun with that digital marketing agency if they want to start earning their money. What we did the first six months?

Nicole Donnelly  27:11

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I have to say like, You’re right on point there. As a digital marketing agency, we do find the most success when we’re working with, you know, there’s already someone internally who owns the marketing department. And then you can build a really great long term relationship report where it’s very collaborative. And there you’re you’re brainstorming that strategy, always month over month, are constantly looking at how you can improve what you can be doing better. And, you know, we’ve been in situations where there isn’t that internal marketer in House who’s managing it, and it’s much more challenging to get the time and the, you know, the the voice and the buy in from the executive leadership, and you need that you absolutely need that. And that that internal marketer really is the bridge. And when you have that relationship, that internal marketer, they’re just so happy to have your support, they’re like, you’re an extension of us, you know, you’re helping me with, I’ve got to do 50 billion other things, and you’re doing this part of it. And it’s just such a huge support for me. So I can’t echo everything you’re just saying, because there is there can be that disconnect, when you don’t have that internal champion who’s there to help you to. So it’s great that you’re doing that, because that really doesn’t make all the difference in terms of the impact that you can have. Because a lot of times if the agency is starting to sputter out it really is because there’s not a relationship there. There’s not someone in leadership that’s paying attention, or cares, even if the agency has been trying to get their attention. And really, you know, there’s it there’s a there’s just, it’s a challenge. So you’re right on top

Jay Skinner  28:40

of it, but it here, so example is one of my customers, that is just, you know what I work as a CEO extender, I’m like a fractional CEO. I am the CEO, and I’m in my position. And it’s about, you know, like the equivalent of seven or 10 hours a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. And if I have to travel, like extra days and things like that, there’s no surprises, they pay me a set amount. And it’s, it’s like it’s way better than if I was full time because I cost a lot of money. But if it’s just a little bit, it’s like, okay, we can handle that. And they noticed that once I’m on board, they get a lot more than just seven to 10 hours a week most of the time. Yeah, because my heart said that I’m sleeping, I’m trying to do stuff and help them get things done. And the owner of the company loves it. Because when he buys a new company, I walk in I’m him. And so there’s only so much for him to go around. But he can trust me just to simply walk in and help get things done or say Jake, go up to this new acquisition, help organize some stuff. And that’s what I did. In one company that I did packaging systems. They bought a company called small quantity boxes. And can I show you the work that I did there? Absolutely. So here’s a for instance, one of the biggest things was packaging systems had gone into their own digital marketing program. But at the same time, small quantity boxes which they bought at done some stuff. And this was an acquisition, we rebranded the company, from PAC from small quantity boxes to personalized packaging systems, we came up with some characters, because we wanted to be really different. And we want to get away from the idea that is only small quantity. So someone needs 50 or 100 personalized boxes in what they’re doing. Absolutely. But at the same time, if they want to, you know, truckloads, I want people to recognize they can probably, we can handle that as well. We do that kind of work in all sorts of things. And we also added some additional, we call product. Pillars. So we got personalized printed boxes, polypropylene, paper, and printed tapes, flexible printed sleeves, promotional items. And then even an online store, which is anything marketing store with people can get on and buy stuff. And they can buy, they can buy naked packaging, and then say I want to talk to someone about getting dressed up, because you can go to don’t package naked.com Which is kind of fun. We’ve trademarked and we’re trademarking that, and we’re making it fun. Yeah, what I did was I’m doing all this work here, I hired, I mean, in my client, and I managed an American Eagle dot conferences, and they’re good digital marketing company. And then we did this cool stuff. And then here’s an example. Then at the same time, recognizing that it’s really expensive to work with some of these agencies like American eagle.com. They are affordable in some areas and other areas. It’s like, creative and some other things. So I went to Upwork. And I hooked up with a good Upwork guy, and I got a Upwork guy that’s helping me work with me. And we’re doing creative. Now. Look at how fun is this? When you’re trying to help people get the idea of the importance of don’t package naked? Instead dress him up? Can I show this? Please do? Yeah, yeah. It’s all yours, Jay. You’re

Damon Pistulka  32:11

sandbox Sammy.

32:40

Your package experiences eight to 10 touch points and more during its life. This is where people see it, touch it, process it. And notice by chance, which results in impressions that last personalized packaging systems PPS is here to help you navigate from naked packaging to branded, beautiful and memorable packaging that can be done in both small or large quantities. We print for you on tape, pouches, paper bags and boxes, find us at don’t package naked.com That’s don’t package naked.com We are PPS your personalized packaging system. personalizing your tape, pouches, paper bags and boxes. Thanks for watching packaging peak and sandbox Sammy on their mission to don’t package naked. Dress em up.

33:33

Love it.

Nicole Donnelly  33:35

Such personality.

Damon Pistulka  33:37

So think about that. There’s so many so many in this instance, you know the being able to come in and do this the company, they probably don’t have the expertise to do it. They don’t have the bandwidth to do it. And in the you as the conduit, you can actually take the time to learn the company better than the digital marketing marketing agency because you can go down the hall, talk to people scheduled meetings, talk to the internal people really gather this stuff in the you know, the few minutes to spare time to really collaborate and collect the information you need to transform and to actually produce something like this because internal a marketing agency doesn’t know will not get to know enough about you. through osmosis working with you.

Jay Skinner  34:24

They’re not going to have the guts to say don’t package naked. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s like I scared them all to death. I said it’s okay. It’ll be fun. It’s funny. We’re gonna keep a G rated it’s wonderful. fun with it. People will get the idea and it’s catching on. In it’s interesting in in the whole world of people that are offering packaging. It’s like okay, this is special. And, and this is what I’m trying to do is help my customer get share of mind. And then and so, I am the I’m doing what the CEO of our company would like to be able to do a via the time, which is orchestrate all this.

Nicole Donnelly  35:04

Yeah, it’s so great. I love what Joseph says here he likes he has likes the South Park, feel the video very nice. And that’s clear as it gets great video. One of the things I’m seeing and I’m curious your perspective on this to Jays something as an agency that we’re really consciously trying to do more of is offering coaching services. So rather than just a pure do it for you approach, whereas the agency, you come in, and you do the work for the client, to your point, there’s nobody that’s going to know the business as well as intimately as in as deeply as someone who’s on your internal team who’s working there. Who’s been in the industry, you know, so one of the things that, you know, we’ve been exploring and testing out with some of our clients is offering coaching services for that internal team where you can coach them and have ongoing training on SEO, for example, or content, marketing, et cetera, et cetera. Are you seeing from your experience any interest in that arena? what’s your what’s your what’s your? What’s your feedback on that?

Jay Skinner  36:02

Well, let’s see, if I understand. When you’re talking about coaching, you mean, dealing with people that are already employees of the company that they’ve been, like, handed off is like, okay, Mary, I want you to know, our Facebook posts. And yes, John, I want you you do, when we need to put a blog thing up on our website, I want you to learn how to do that in WordPress, so that you can actually post it, and that you kind of teach them and become the go to person to teach them how to do it.

36:30

Exactly, yes.

Jay Skinner  36:35

It kind of works depend upon the the people that are in the office, and how much interest they have in doing it really, if they’re like, gung ho, like, oh, man, I want to do it. I want to get on the internet and post up in Facebook and do this and create shorts and do this and learn from my digital marketing people. So I can, I can do this, and they’re into it. You’ll get action there. Yeah. But if they’re the office manager calendar here on the side, yeah. And the guy is trying to save money on the posted up activity. It’s, it’s like pushing a rope snag. Yeah. And they’re gonna, like go home, they’re gonna be unhappy. One of the, there, let’s, let’s see, which is people need to be happy to work. And one of the things that I would suggest to you that as you’re working with, with customers, or they’re trying to figure out a way to maybe lighten up their financial load, have you teach them how to do some stuff and see how it works, great idea, teaching, trying to help people, but at the same time, you need to do an assessment of the people that they think are the right people in their office to do this. And you may use one of these assessments, like some types of working genius, or six types. Yeah, what are having types? I’m a big working genius guy. I can’t tell you how many times either six or seven.

38:05

by Tony, right.

Jay Skinner  38:07

Actually, this is Tony, this is a different ones, Patrick Lencioni was six types of working genius. I like that for for working groups. Let me let me get get it just right, six types of working genius, by Patrick Lencioni. You’ll go to working genius.com. If you have a working group at this counseling, whatever you’re doing, if you would have everybody if you go to that website, working genius.com is a very quick assessment thing. I love Tony’s I’m not discounting my working group approach. I really love with Patrick’s working genius. And you can find out who’s into it and who’s not and what their strengths are. They’re working geniuses. And I would say then find out if it’s good. And then when when the your client is saying, Can you do this for Mary and everything? Well, let’s do an assessment and an interview and see if it’s really work. Because if it’s if it’s a failure to begin with, based upon what makes them happy in a business situation, then then, Mr. Customer, I don’t recommend we do it. Look, Chris has come Yeah, Chris

Damon Pistulka  39:12

got a great question. You know, I believe we are, I believe, yes, it helps.

Jay Skinner  39:19

Yeah, love. Can I read it? Let’s say, it sounds like you’re suggesting that the company needs at least one internal person who’s focused on managing the relationship with the digital marketing agency, this will help to get the most out of the agency. Do I have that? Right? Pretty straightforward. But I want to make sure I’m understanding the message here. And the answer is, yes. You can figure out a way to bottle that concept, or even sell it is as a digital marketing agency that says if I don’t have somebody within your company that’s successful, understands what you guys do, and we can call and talk to and everything like this. We’re going to be bumping along quite a bit. cuz every time I want to talk to the main guy who knows everything, he’s not available, because he’s too busy doing the important stuff, which is making the sale.

Nicole Donnelly  40:07

Yeah, and it dumbs back. Yes, go ahead and say it does help that person has some understanding of marketing and knows, you can understand the metrics and has some background there. Rather than just, you know, someone random, I think you made a really good point, Jay, about doing like, kind of a resource assessment, which is to work with the client to understand okay, well, in order for this marketing engagement to be successful, here is what is needed, right and making recommendations as a consultant to say, these are the resources that you need in order to make this work, doing an assessment of what’s happening. And then maybe it’s something where they need to they need to hire someone, frankly, if it’s not you, maybe they need to hire someone full time, just depending on how big the businesses and that kind of thing just for

Jay Skinner  40:50

you provide someone call me saying, Hey, I know a guy named Jason fractionally can jump in, and it was like, we love him. And we hate him. We love him, because he knows about all this kind of stuff and can work with us. We hate him, because he’s going to challenge us and push us like most of our clients don’t. But he will work on your behalf. And when he steps in, he’s you. He can direct things on your behalf. And he’s the CEO extender.

41:22

Yeah, and I would say,

Nicole Donnelly  41:24

Yeah, I think it’s great from a market from a digital marketing agency standpoint, you know, we want to be challenged because we want to get results for the client, that is our bread and butter. Like if you know, that’s our reputation on the line, not just theirs, right. So I think a really good marketing agency values, relatives really cherishes having someone who is going to challenge them, who is going to be able to provide that, you know, internal voice, someone who’s going to be available to them, make sure they have a really good understanding of what the overall business strategy is, and be involved in that, you know, and involved in what those numbers are. So I think you’re, you know, a good mark. And I think that’s a really good litmus test with the marketing agency is if there’s some resistance or hesitance with working with someone like you, that’s a red flag, in my opinion, like they’re they a good marketing agencies going to want and relish that.

Jay Skinner  42:15

Yes, yes. Yeah. Chris is saying how well does the manufacturing industry understand the concept of fractional outsource schools,

Damon Pistulka  42:22

they’re getting to understand it a lot better. It certainly is. I mean, there’s a lot of fractional CFO is now we work with, there’s a lot of fractional C level people that are working in the organizations, even CEOs that I that I deal with a lot that are in there, because they have, you know, like you said, they’re going to buy a company, they’re going to open a division, they’re going to do these kinds of things, and they put those people in place. But coming back to what you said about, we’re going to have Damon the whatever person role in our business, he’s going to be the one doing the social media posting. You got to if you’re gonna do that a you got to do like you said, you got to do an assessment on that person to see it is but it also it has to go into their scope of responsibilities. And this is the last piece that I see so many CEOs or leaders doing is like, oh, yeah, we’re gonna have Daymond do it. And then they never make sure that Damon really understands that, yes, Damien, you’re you’re also, you know, processing payroll every week. But you also have to get the social media posts done every day, or whatever our schedule is on time every day is it’s just as important. Yeah. And that

Jay Skinner  43:32

Google reviews replying. We’ve even gotten into Google Pay Per Click, and all the Google Yeah. And making sure your Google business profile is up to speed. Yeah. And there’s a lot to it. There is a lot to know what about now everybody’s got shorts? Well, okay, we want shorts. So what have I done? I have hired a VA and talk about, yeah, I’ve been looking for months, for months, for months for months, for a virtual assistant, who had the critical thinking skills that they could take my content, like two and a half years worth of shows half hour to 40 minute shows, and turn them into shorts with particular topics, that they can start blasting way into different social media. But I don’t have time to tell them. Well, here’s what I’m talking about. I want to go to number 10 seconds earlier, and then do like this and carry on do like this. I need someone who can look at it, get the idea what it’s about, and put it together without me looking. And I just looked at the Hey, that guy’s pretty smart. I found one finally. And I’ve got a VA of the cost efficient VA who can look at my shows and create five or six shorts out of it in just no time at all. As she gets it. It’s like Thank You, Jesus. That’s

Nicole Donnelly  44:50

the big Yeah. And that’s really exciting. We do a lot of that repurposing of content for our clients as an agency and what’s really exciting is to see the really cool AI tools that are coming out Now that allow you to just like, literally upload your long form content, and within 1520 minutes, it’ll pull out 20 clips that are captioned that have, you know, little subtitles and everything is just like, amazing to see that how that’s going to transform I think, and make so much more. Make marketing so much more efficient, easy for small companies

Jay Skinner  45:22

to fun. I mean, I’ve been doing Changi cheap with the paid version as long as you could get it. And in playing with it. And this Friday, there’s a guy named I don’t know if you recognize the name Terry Brock, but he’s the National Speakers Association, Hall of Famer, he’s also a great AI. genitive, if it had to do with technology. This is a guy with with no hair has been around for a billion years. And he cannot computer most computer guys. Terry’s going to be on my buyers and sellers show this Friday morning’s live. And we’re going to do generative AI a full demo of Jarvis AI. Because it’s one thing to tell people how to do it. It’s no things like, get on there actually do it, showing the program to use and how it works, and get people thinking about it. And then what they will realize most is they need you, Nicole and Damon when companies like yours, to just do it for him? Because just like my repurposing of all my stuff. Yeah, I cannot do all that. Physically. Do I know how you bet? Do I have time to no way. There’s people who love doing it, that do not go out and do the crazy things that I do out there in the world. And I want to pay them to do it so that I can do the stuff I love and I’m great at.

Nicole Donnelly  46:47

Yeah, and I think from an efficiency and from a cost perspective, what’s great about AI is it doesn’t replace the need for a really good content marketer. Because you now what happens is, is that all of these add many tasks can just get get offloaded to someone who’s an admin who can take care of that. And then the high level, you know, we need to create a blog post, you know, in depth pillar page, you know, all of that you can really have, you’re really strong content marketers, writers work with the subject matter experts at the company, to spend their time working on that, rather than focusing on some of this other stuff. So, you know, you’re absolutely right, you still need a person to manage the process, you know, make sure that everything comes out, okay, tweak, etc. But it’s just, if you could just get so much more value with these AI tools. And you know, like, from a video perspective, like gloss AI is one Opus click is another that we’ve been testing out that allow you to upload this long form content, and it’s just amazing. What can come out from from those tools. It’s so cool and exciting to see. Yeah.

Jay Skinner  47:52

So Joseph was asked, I love this private conversation with Joseph between here is like, was he at the floor? Yes, Joseph, Terry Brock was at the Florida National Speakers Association Conference. I’m a member of that. And you know that I’m a member of the NSA. Because if you go back to all the greats and speaking, and you know, like I said, Zig Ziglar. And all these people, Napoleon Hill, these people, I don’t know if bowling was a member, but people that knew him was these greats back 50 years ago, were part of the National Speakers Association. And it just to get to rub shoulders with him. On and on, it’s so thankful for. Here’s something I would like to mention. You’re talking about teaching and coaching. And I’ve kind of got a pet peeve about teaching and coaching that’s going on there. And I kind of want as long as I’ve got this platform, I want to talk to people about buying, teaching and coaching that’s teaching you how to teach and coach and charge other people to coach and charge people teaching coach to charge people to teach and coach to charge. How long can I stop?

Damon Pistulka  49:04

Yeah, yeah. Oh, my

Jay Skinner  49:08

God, there’s no value people listen to their great ideas or whatever saying and then run like run for the hills.

49:14

Yeah.

Jay Skinner  49:17

I will tell you that. There’s there’s a lot of people out there teaching people how to teach people in charge them to teach people how to charge them. Unbelievable. And if you fall into that, cycle, by accident, you’re going to learn first time, shame on you. Second time is like oh my gosh, don’t don’t let it happen again. You’re manufacturing ecommerce success. I evaluate what I say and what I do and what I’m doing every day by whether or not, I’m actually producing some and I really like all the smart stuff I tell you about and my shorts and give you this thing and tell you about all these great people I know and everything like this isn’t producing anything Doing well, it better or I want to don’t say it. I don’t want to do it. I want to do something with people that actually produces some when I work for a customer, I wanted to be able to say things like my customers on my website do under testimonies. I did something. I helped to roll out a new division. I helped good things happen. And they love the work that I did. We produce something. It wasn’t ethereal, it’s actually producing something. And so make sure whatever you’re doing that ties back to actually producing something. And it’s not an endless cycle of, of just spinning the wheel. That’s so important. Oh,

Damon Pistulka  50:39

I love it. Jay. I love it. Jay, I just I was on a show last week. And we got we got talking about the the buying the zero down business. And it’s the same thing. There’s people out there that are out there telling by the zero down business and other people teaching people how to buy the zero down business and, and the reality is, there’s very few that are ever done. It’s just it’s you’re making money off of teaching somebody how to teach somebody, like you said, it’s good. So I don’t

Jay Skinner  51:08

know who Chris is, but we will have him in the show. Yeah, Chris, is this why manufacturers are so averse to getting outside help federal training, onboarding programs that they sorely need?

Damon Pistulka  51:20

I think that’s been a long time. You know, I started out manufacturing, before I went, I still had all my hair. And it was, you know, and it’s been that way for a long time. Because they they really have to they’re so unique in a lot of ways. They figure out a lot of their stuff with internally, and it is but to be competitive. Now. You you really you have to have a lot more. It’s there’s so much technical expertise, and so many like you’re talking Jay Today, just to keep up with the technical expertise and the things that you’re doing with digital marketing agencies is a huge amount of work. Yeah.

Nicole Donnelly  51:55

I mean, just digital marketing itself is just the complexity. There’s so much complexity, that you know, it you frankly, you need to partner with vendors in certain cases, you just have to manage it, because there’s no way for you to be able to do it all in house unless you hire a full time like huge internal marketing department and it just doesn’t, there’s no justification for that. If you’re if you’re under a certain, you know, and we’re just

Damon Pistulka  52:19

talking about digital marketing. We’re going to talk about cybersecurity supply chain leadership, you just they have all these things that they’re trying to trying to say to keep abreast of and it’s, it’s it’s really interesting, but I think that this also is driving a lot more manufacturers to go outside their doors, find trusted experts, and get the help they need.

Jay Skinner  52:44

I wouldn’t mind posting up some of these things. I got my email address my website, if you want to see my best. What’s better,

Damon Pistulka  52:55

Joseph SAS Good. What’s what’s better keto? Let’s get to that with that because Yeah.

Jay Skinner  53:05

Vegan vegan, vegan, I promise you vegan.

Nicole Donnelly  53:11

Yeah. That’s full of veg and fiber. You can’t go wrong. Yeah, it’s just got to be well balanced.

Jay Skinner  53:19

Right rhinoceros success. They’ll talk about a vegan that that eats Lea and plows through the Django jungle and there was a guy named Scott Alexander who invented rhinoceros success. And this is my Rhino to remember. And how would you like to be? You’re built like this. You can plow through the jungle. You eat leaves. Vegan I ate some meat too, but if I got to choose, that’s what you do. There.

Nicole Donnelly  53:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. pescatarian you know, pescatarian a bad

Jay Skinner  53:56

pescatarian that’s a fish person. Yeah. Yeah. scatto I know what to do when I say that in the Spanish restaurant. Yeah,

Nicole Donnelly  54:05

Joseph replied, trying to change direction of a gyro. Yeah. Well,

Damon Pistulka  54:11

it’s been awesome having you here. I haven’t we’re at the point that we got to start wrapping this thing up, Jay. And it’s, it’s so much fun talking to you and just and who are we gonna get an outro we had such a great intro play us out. You can play us out. But before we do, do you want to make sure to thank everyone I mean, Joseph and Chris and Diane and who all else. There’s tons of people in the conversation here. We got great comments going on today, Gary. Nicole, it’s

Nicole Donnelly  54:45

great day. Another great day in paradise with Michael. Yeah. And Jay.

Jay Skinner  54:53

BARWICK. Yo, give me a call after the show if you got time. I love to talk to you. There you go.

Nicole Donnelly  54:59

Oh, Oh, this is nice from Chris, thanks for the engagement today. Appreciate all the work you’re doing. Chris, thanks for all your great cause for being so engaged. It’s really nice to your audience asking questions, and yeah. Awesome. So thank you.

Damon Pistulka  55:13

Yeah. So Thanks, Jay. You helped us helped us get a little more engagement in the audience today. Sometimes we get gone with our guests and we just miss it and nurse.

Jay Skinner  55:24

More question, if I may, sir. You guys, how do you make money? How do people get in touch with you have?

Damon Pistulka  55:35

I had to call you start?

Nicole Donnelly  55:36

No, I don’t have a digital marketing agency. We specialize specifically in content marketing. We go in and we interview your subject matter experts. And within a half hour time a month, we’re going to generate a month’s worth of content for you video content, social media content, blog content rich content that will be published under your website and on your social channels and distributed for you. So if you want to reach me, you can reach me at LinkedIn, just Nicole, Nicole dash Donnelly, dash dmg or dmg. digital.io is our website. So that’s me, that’s what I do.

Damon Pistulka  56:11

I help people I help business owners and manufacturing ecommerce and health care businesses solve problems. First of all, they’re usually pretty frustrated when they talk to me. But then we get on to a program of building their value. And that includes buying businesses or organic growth. And when they’re ready to the size they want, we will sell them. And we’re usually going to sell those into an investment buyer, which you and I both agree I’ve lived in that P world. We don’t want them to live in there. But they’re really good buyers of businesses when you get to that point.

Jay Skinner  56:41

Oh, yeah, exactly. And there’s good ways to do it. Yeah, meet and

Damon Pistulka  56:45

we prepare, and I mean, all the way and it’s really you know how it is you they want a business to be set up a certain way. And that’s what we really specialize in.

Jay Skinner  56:54

So what I see is if someone was had a business, and they’re they’re looking down the way and maybe their kids are not like gonna take it over, they’d like to live the American Dream, which is get some of the cash out of it. You’re probably the guy they should call

57:09

they Yes, that’s exactly. Hey, man,

Jay Skinner  57:13

mergers and acquisitions,

Damon Pistulka  57:14

we fix them, we fix them before we sell them. That’s what we do. He’s the

Nicole Donnelly  57:18

business then master, anyone comes to him with a problem challenge, David, your guy’s gonna bring the Zen he’s gonna come up with the solution. And he’s gonna save this.

57:30

I like it. I like Uj.

Damon Pistulka  57:31

I’m like, uj we’ve been we’ve been around a long enough. And we, we’ve been that right hand person, and we know what it takes to fix the things and we just get it done. That’s the end of

Jay Skinner  57:40

And again, it’s digress one way. When it comes to fractional HR guys, the world kind of gets it. Fractional financial guys, the world kind of gets it. Even a fractional is kind of coo in manufacturing, the world gets it. There’s no CEOs and business owners Googling, I need someone to help me. We meet them on planes, trains, and, and business conferences. Maybe we get lucky online, they say, I’m gonna give that guy a call. But it starts with that. Maybe this guy can help me. Maybe Damien is the right guy for me. And they take a chance and give you a call or they give me a call. Or they talk to us on the plane. And they say, Well, let’s try something. This is a very personal business that we’re in. It is.

58:30

It is it is absolutely. Yeah, that’s what makes it so cool. Yeah.

Jay Skinner  58:35

What is it? Are we done? Yes, go.

Damon Pistulka  58:38

Take us out today, Jay. We’re doing today, everyone. Thanks so much for being here.

Jay Skinner  58:54

See you next time.

Damon Pistulka  58:56

All right.

Nicole Donnelly  58:58

Thanks for another wonderful session of Manufacturing eCommerce Success. Damon Curt, we can’t wait for you to be back. We miss you. We’re waiting for you. And Jay. You’re phenomenal. Thank you so much.

59:12

Okay, talk to you later. Stay online here.